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Are we Rebels or Rabbits?

4/3/2023

On April 21-24 there’s going to be a massive demonstration for the climate in Parliament Square in London. All the environmental organizations are joining forces and they are expecting 100,000 people. I am volunteering as a steward and a cook and will be camping in front of Parliament Square over the four days. These photos show an outreach event for The Big One that I participated in, in my own community of Harrow. I have always hated outreach but I was riding high yesterday.
“I am religious,” says one. “What will happen is God’s will.”
“Absolutely,” I replied, “and God has given us free will. And did you know that all the Christian leaders are backing The Big One because they think it’s so important? (This is true—google London’s Bishops and Archdeacons back “The Big One” climate change protest.)
If they were from the Far East I talked sorrowfully of the unbearable impacts their countries were already suffering. If they were black I talked about the Civil Rights movement—“This is the way change is made! Together and united!”
If they were veiled Muslim women I talked of the Suffragette movement (kidding).

Whoever I talked to, I looked soulfully into their eyes and placed my hand on their arm (you know, like the politicians kissing babies to get votes) and said, “United, we can do this. Together, we can force the government to listen.” Simon did the same thing in Reversing Time—he adapted his words to his audience.

And I only got a little irritable ONCE. There was this Ukranian woman who barely spoke English, so I acted out the different choices while she said how the Ukranians were peace-loving people and how traumatized she was so she couldn’t go to a large rally because crowds scared her. So then I wanted her to bugger off so I could focus on somebody else (any ex-student of mine can testify to my oodles of empathy) but she’s putting her sticker on the #1 spot for how the government is dealing with the crisis.
“Government here very good,” she says, jabbing another sticker on the #1 spot.
“They’re crap about the environment,” I said, “you’re only supposed to put one sticker.”
“Very good government. Best government,” she says, feverishly showering stickers on #1, obviously pissed that the majority of people had stuck them on #5 (if you zoom in on the panels you’ll see how many stickers the silly cow put on #1).
Eventually I grabbed her hand, which was acceptable since she didn’t speak English and obviously hadn’t understood and damn if I was going to let someone bolster Rushi Sunak’s ratings through ignorance. Give her a year or two and she’ll be bitching and complaining like the rest of us. 😊

Since coming to England, I’ve had this strange feeling that every idea in Reversing Time is being implemented, which is a bit weird because it means that all the ideas I thought were mine are in fact universal.

Examples:
1.) Simon time travels to right wing and left wing families and concludes that both of them are resisting change equally, for different reasons; my little contribution to chipping away at left sanctimony about this issue. Last week I went to a climate action meeting and met Ed Gemmel, leader of the new Climate Party. What’s the difference between that party and the Green Party? Ed’s right-wing and that’s beautiful because this issue can NOT become polarized (or more polarized). Unfortunately he bored the shit out of me by blabbing on about how religious he is. Go kiss some babies, Ed.
2.) I have always lamented that there are multiple climate groups with little overlap. The vast majority of people care about this issue, and if we unite we are HUGE (like we’ll be on Parliament Square later this month, Inshallah). But all these little groups work on their own because Greenpeace doesn’t like Extinction Rebellion because they do civil unrest and this one doesn’t like…it’s always pissed me off. But now we’re all joining together.
3.) The goal of Reversing Time was to “empower people to see what will happen if we do act” (interview in Atlantic Books) and part of how to do that is to create art that inspires with hope. Instead, as I’ve said in previous blogs, climate fiction is dystopian and all the messaging is doom and gloom. This is CRAZY, and that’s why Reversing Time is full of realistic hope, about a boy who becomes a climate hero through doing what we all should be doing—because it’s possible to change the future if we act now. There are tons of statistics etc. out there proving that people respond to hope much more than despair, and it’s totally obvious, but I felt like I was all by myself (the looney bin phenomenon again).
But then the BBC wrote: “Despite our societies being at crisis point, just 2.8% of scripted TV and films released 2016-2020 mentioned anything related to climate change, and just 0.56% mentioned it directly. We are interested in stories that explore climate change creatively. We are not interested in apocalyptic dystopias.”

Yes, you did read that correctly—they’re not interested in dystopias!

Bridging the polarized gap, uniting forces, creating utopian art--despite the realization that my ideas are actually run of the mill this is fucking BRILLIANT. Dear human race, I think we’re actually going to do this!

Tip: If you love meat, chicken isn’t that bad for the environment. If you love beef, cut it down. A T-bone steak should be a lobster-like treat—we actually enjoy things more if they’re treats, so if you cut down your meat-eating you’ll actually be happier! And check out the new plant-based meat—it really does taste the same!

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Dal and Poo

2/28/2023

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I’m going through the arbitration process at Dal.

Re-reading my old evaluations, the main impression is the extremity of the students’ reactions. Mathematically, the vast majority of my students felt that their writing skills grew under my guidance. That’s all ANY teacher can say. But not any teacher gets the types of positive reviews I get (like “most inspiring teacher in the English department” etc.). And not every teacher gets negative reviews like mine, either.

I once asked a colleague: “Do your evaluations upset you?”
He related a lengthy story about an ungrounded accusation of sexism, ending, “Don’t take it personally; their subjective opinion has little to do with you.”
And I said, “One of my evals said, ‘Charlotte Mendel is a mean and hateful person.’”

That just ain’t the same as being accused of sexism.

Anyway, today I had a meeting with the union and they say there’s no point going to arbitration unless I want my job back. So I thought about that.
I don’t want to teach because I was terrified the whole time. I always refused to work in retail because I disagree with the idea that the customer is always right. Dalhousie is like a nightmare where all the clients are 18.

In 2017 I had problems at Dal as well and I continued to teach because it was my bread and butter and it’s not good to burn bridges. In 2017, I recognized that Dal’s extreme vigilance over the behaviour and speech of their teachers sprang from a desire to rectify past wrongs. The twin colonial evils of greed and racism created behaviour so egregious that subsequent generations inherited the trauma and we must be vigilant not to do further harm. In 2017, my views were ideologically aligned with that. What happened was my fault because I wasn’t sensitive enough, and I took further training, made huge changes in my curriculum, and tried to do better.

In 2023, I repudiate the university’s ideology. In the global south today, food security is plummeting and starvation is rising because of climate change. Last summer, the floods affected 33 million people in Pakistan, with 15 million needing emergency food assistance. If 33 million white people were suffering like this, don’t you think our snail’s pace response to the climate crisis would speed up a little? Wanna bet that Canada would ditch Bay du Nord if those floods had happened to whites?

But wait, there’s more. According to Canada National Observer, “The usual standard of dividing cumulative emissions by the current population leaves Canada as the worst polluter in the world”. BTW, Pakistan is #158. That’s because you and me grew up with fossil-fuel heavy habits. Yet we know that our actions are contributing to the climate crisis. How to interpret this—our insistence that we have the right to continue consuming as much as we want—other than greed?

So greed and racism are still killing people today. Now, at this moment. The majority of Dal profs drive SUVs and fly to their holidays and eat beef. How can we justify a focus on past wrongs, when we’re perpetrating the exact same wrongs today? When our lens are STILL so distorted that we can’t minimize our fucking flying for a few years? Now let’s go pull down another statue of a past racist so we can feel virtuous! Or fire a teacher!

Of course, if I accept a settlement I’ll be sworn to confidentiality, so I won’t be able to tell you what happened. I’ll have to restrict myself to smaller gratifications, like last week when I attended an international conference on banking and fossil fuels. A Frenchman asked about Dalhousie, “How do you say da name of dis university?”
“Da Lousy University,” I replied.

TIP: Switch toilet paper for water, rinsing for smush-ing, clean bums for dirty.
How? If your shower head is fixed to the wall you probably have an empty jar in your bathroom already, for rinsing those places the showerhead can’t reach (at least if you’re a woman). After a poo, just sluice your anus with water while still sitting on the toilet. Use soap if you want a squeaky-clean bum. A couple of squares of toilet paper will suffice to dry, or a wash-cloth—whatever.
Global toilet paper production consumes 27,000 trees daily. That’s really the extent of my tip but I had a crap day and feel a great urge to indulge in the pleasure of pontificating about poo. So stop reading if you’re squeamish.
I travelled in India years ago (before I knew that airplanes spewed poison across the skies) and poos were my biggest challenge.
Toilet paper?
Nah.
Toilet?
Nah.
But there was always water, and a hole in the ground to squat over. So I got used to rinsing after a crap. When I came back, poos were still a challenge, because now I wanted to squat and use water, instead of smearing poo around with toilet paper. Since toilet paper is actually ‘smearing’, you have to use more and more, until there’s nary a smidgeon of poo left. It’s all smeared on the hillock of dirty toilet paper. The death of a tree for a clean bum? Well, let’s think about how clean it really is? In Europe and Asia they have bidets. Clearly, it’s cleaner to use water.
Not convinced? Visualize a little bit of poo sticking to your anus. Visualize it interacting with toilet paper. Now visualize it interacting with water. See? Rinsing sloshes the poo away, while wiping smushes it. Gross, huh?
Damn, this angle might just work. Nova Scotians care about cleanliness. If I can link an environmentally good habit to cleanliness—I’ll increase my chances of success. Nah, screw success, I gave up on that long ago. I just love talking about poo. I even love the word ‘poo’. In the days I loved my husband, I took proud photos of his poo, and still maintain they are unrivalled in the categories of Size and Smell. I could prove this by posting them here but I fear it could be used against me in the divorce courts.

Now for some stats about the vulnerability of butt hair when smush-ing…

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Cli-fi or Clit-fi?

1/12/2023

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Amitav Ghosh called climate change “a crisis of culture, and thus of imagination” and called for writers to play a greater role six years ago. So if you’re a writer who understands that we must transition away from fossil fuels this decade if we want to avoid catastrophe—then you start writing cli-fi, right? After all, writers have historically played a role in great societal change. But for some reason, our industry is not only failing to lead—we’re lagging behind the friggin’ oil companies.

Oil companies are getting so much pressure that they spend billions to show they are prioritizing the energy transition. It’s a central issue for most politicians as well—a lot is happening globally at the political level. It’s true that Cli-Fi is a growing genre, but most stories are set in a post-apocalyptic world, which is a bit like Zelensky rousing his troops by describing the devastation a Russian victory would cause. I don’t think we need to focus on what will happen if we don’t act; our stories need to empower people to see what will happen if we do act.

Yet even though I am trying to do something that is new—books that make the crisis as sexy an enemy as Voldemarte and fire people’s imagination with a Churchillian call to action—it is hard to find literary agents or publishers who are interested in climate fiction. They simply don’t exist—I invite you to google if you have any doubts.

And this is why I think that the publishing industry is lagging behind most businesses and most politicians—but even worse, it is lagging behind its own readers.
So, epiphany!
No more dystopian cli-fi, people have hard lives and they don’t want to read gloom and doom. Create gripping stories with climate heroes and villains that rouse people to think about their own behaviour. Excite readers by plugging them into the real-life tsunami of change happening globally so they get excited about being part of it. And keep publishing this new brand of rousing, utopian cli-fi. This is what I tried to do with my first YA novel, Reversing Time, and this is what I want to do with all my writing.

But the problem is, I have another book coming out in May that deviates from this purpose. To be honest, it came out more clit-fi than cli-fi. One letter makes such a difference!
This isn’t because I’m succumbing to my regrettable penchant for bodily functions. This is because A Hostage was written before my epiphany, then the publisher in Inanna died and Covid happened and five years passed.

DO NOT READ A HOSTAGE.

It’s not just that I feel it will be detrimental to the image I am trying to create as an enlightened climate writer, it’s also shit clit-fi, because I wrote it before the Me Too movement and the Buddhists.

The Me Too movement taught me how sexist I was, and the Buddhists taught me there are many different ways of having sex. Not that I had sex with any of them, but I learned a ton from their attempts-to-convince.

Of course there’s lots of sex in my cli-fi, but it’s sophisticated and contemporary. Not sexist and weird like A Hostage, when I used to fantasize about being penetrated in three orifices
all at the same time. Apparently.

DO NOT READ A HOSTAGE.

Bonus! This means you can come to the pubby launch this spring and enjoy the food and the company—anyone who has been to my launches know they’re more like parties—and you don’t even have to buy the damn book!

The sex in my current books is just as titillating, but much more equal and…polite. What, you may ask, is the connection between sex and politeness?
Why everything, I answer, with the confidence of the absolutely ignorant.

“You first.”
“No, no, you first. I insist.”

Tip: People talk about the emissions of the corporations as though they’re a separate entity, but who supports the corporations? We do, for the most part. Choose to buy what you need from eco-conscious stores.

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Guy Fawkes Day

11/26/2022

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One thing I can’t get used to in England are the hordes and variety of people, especially in downtown London. I couldn’t afford a flat in central London; where I live most people look the same. I wasn’t sure where they were from, because the shopfronts boast signs like, “Sri Lankan, Indian, Nigerian, English and Continental Food”, but most of them looked like they were from the Far East. This was confirmed during the week of Diwali, when all my neighbours set off fireworks in their backyards. But it’s downtown London where the crowds are so thick that you must weave through humans like a needle through cloth, and they represent every culture and colour in the world.

It’s exciting, but there’s no respite. On my daily walks in the huge park behind my flat there are no stretches where I can chat unselfconsciously with myself, like I do in Canada. Always someone straggling towards you with their dog, even in the remote woody areas of the park. I feel irritation as they pass, knowing it’s unreasonable, worrying I’m getting too eccentric. Days go by and I don’t talk to anyone. I can’t afford to get more weird. But nor can I afford to lose the intoxicating feeling of freedom I experience every morning, knowing I am in control of every second of my day.

It takes less energy to be negative than positive, so it’s our natural state—probably something to do with survival in our animal past: expect danger everywhere, you’re about to be eaten. We have to make a conscious effort to think positively, so I guide my thoughts from fury at the sight of a human, to gratitude that I don’t have to speak to them (but they can see I’m trying to pass, why can’t they move their fucking dog off the path?… Stop it! Look at the sun shining through the leaves. Isn’t it lovely that you don’t have to pee? If you needed to pee you’d be griping the whole walk, so what about a little gratitude when you don’t need to pee)?

Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated in every borough and my sister and I debated whether to go into London to witness the biggest celebrations, or meet half-way between our homes at a smaller borough. We decided on the latter and the whole scene was very jolly, with lots of rides and food trucks, an excellent band and—of course—hordes of people, mostly families. I danced outside for the first time in months, compensation for missing my own yearly bonfire party this year. Everyone was smiling and pleasant and enjoying themselves. Then the fireworks started and they were unbelievable and they went on and on and the crowd ooh-ed and ah-ed, necks craned skywards. And I couldn’t help it; negativity started to creep in as clouds of smoke from the fireworks billowed across the sky. There are only so many types of fireworks. Do we really need to see ten examples of each type? And this is going on in hundreds of areas all over London, a million more fireworks than is necessary for maximum enjoyment. A billion more poisonous chemicals released into our overburdened atmosphere. Every child is holding a plastic whirligig with lights that sparkle when it whirrs around. Dozens of trucks carting mountains of plastic to the landfill fill my head. We are in a fucking crisis. Can’t we modify our lives a tiny bit, to save the future? Wouldn’t ten minutes of fireworks have been enough? It would have been enough!

I worry that I’ll never be able to enjoy anything again. If you see everything through the lens of the climate crisis, so much of what we are doing seems looney. Yet so many people think I’m the looney.

You can’t obsess about what you can’t control. It’s not helpful to get depressed by the excesses around you. Or to pray that a huge bomb wipes out half the world and gives the other half a chance. If I could make a deal with God, sacrificing myself and my kids in return for taking down 3 billion with us, I would.

So is it the rich I hate, or the masses of normal, stupid people? The only reason the rich are polluting more is because they have more wherewithal; normal, stupid people pollute as much as they can. Yet historically, there have been many times with the mass of normal, stupid people have risen up against wrongdoing and triumphed—the suffragette movement, the civil rights movement, the Arab Spring. But people have to suffer to make them rise up like that, and by the time we’re truly suffering from the climate crisis, it will be too late.

It’s the normal people you’re trying to woo, with your books and your Climate Action Game. So stop calling them stupid. But how can you like people who know, and don’t change? I’ll never succeed. Maybe it’s OK that we’re hurtling towards suicide.

What a depressing fucking blog. Sorry. I don’t really believe that. I am going to devote the rest of my life to fighting the climate crisis, in every way I can. For the future of my race—the human race.

It’s just the blame game; another mindless trap, just like negativity. Don’t we all need someone to blame? The left like to blame the right but their efforts to co-opt the crisis and link it inextricably with a checklist of left-wing concerns is undermining the chance of unity and with it our best bet for a successful outcome. No, if you want to save the climate you DON’T have to like homosexuals and abortions.

The left are tut-tutting over Bibi’s re-election in Israel, and insisting that democracy is under threat because he’ll probably align with the extreme and the religious. But whose fault is that? The left. If they’d agree to form a coalition with Bibi then democracy would be saved. If democracy is under threat in Israel, it’s the left’s fault as much as Bibi’s.

So much for thinking positively. Yank the mind back. You love the rich and the left and the mindless hordes. And of course I can still enjoy myself. There are so many wonderful things to do that don’t hurt the climate. Socializing, toking, meditating, eating, reading, fucking, going to first-class plays in the West End. I am in the best city in the world and I am free.

Tip: Take Tupperware to restaurants. If you don’t finish your meal, you won’t have to borrow plastic to take it home.

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Politics and Philosophy

11/5/2022

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In the past week I spent a day dancing around my bedsit (actually it’s so small I was really just turning around) because in Brazil, Lula won by a small majority (50.9% to Bolsonaro’s 49.1%) which means the Amazon Forest will be saved.

A few days later I was lying face-down in bed weeping, because Netanyahu was voted in in Israel. To win, he’s made alliances with the far-right, a once-fringe, anti-democratic, racist movement.

We’ve all experienced this, haven’t we? Our nails are bitten to the quick during every US election; and the spectre of Trump winning in 2024 haunts us all. Or at least half of us.
It feels like the whole world is split down the middle. Every election is so close, it could go either way. In many cases it doesn’t seem to matter what the incumbent actually does during their time in office, people are so polarized. Trump’s ratings never dipped below 35% no matter what he did or said; rip children from the arms of migrant parents, praise Putin and fascists, advise your people to inject disinfectants during a pandemic—nothing changed the minds of his supporters (although I have to point out that both Johnson and Truss’ supporters deserted them en masse for massively less serious offences, even though it detracts from the point I am trying to make).

My point? It’s really hard to feel that democracy is working. Trust in politicians is at an all-time low, and all of us can point to a myriad of instances where they’ve blatantly lied to us—both the right and the left (Tony Blair insisted that Iraq had chemical weapons/Obama abandoned Gaddafi during the Arab Spring, even though he had been a loyal ally with the US in the war on terror). Even those of us who continue to search for the truth as best we can, know that we can’t escape our bubble. A few corporations decide what we should see and what we shouldn’t, eliminating anything that might challenge our pre-existing beliefs.

Depressed yet?

Don’t be!

We can believe in ourselves. We can believe philosophers that have basically been asking the same questions for centuries. Why are we here and what constitutes a good life? Humans that really think about these things are characterized by the desire “to live by the law of morals”.

Obviously not everyone defines a moral life the same way; we are all trying to define to ourselves what this means. But can anyone logically exclude the climate crisis from this definition?

Every time I watch footage of, say, Pakistan (though there are lots of examples) I am painfully conscious that their suffering is because of my decadent lifestyle. How can I drive everywhere, while they lose everything they have—when I KNOW that my driving is a tiny part of their pain? How does that differ from the slave-master/serf-gentry divisions of the past? We are incomparably richer than most of the world, and we are causing the climate crisis by our self-indulgent lifestyles. And most of us are resisting change mightily, just like the masters and gentry did before us.

Is there a better way for us to live a moral life, than by viewing our actions through the climate action lens? When we look back in 20 years time, what other route will enable us to feel we have led conscientious lives, whatever the actual outcome?

Yes, systematic change needs to happen and we should all be voting and—if we are political—attending rallies and signing petitions blah blah. But we cannot know who will be elected next, even if we vote faithfully every time; we cannot control the results. Socrates believed that all change comes from within. That we can control.

As for me, I’m trying to settle in here in England but change is hard and I sometimes don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I joined XR here, but we don’t see eye-to-eye on the tomato soup incident, when they doused poor old Van Gogh. They seem to think anything that grabs attention to their cause is a good thing. I don’t think random acts of lunacy are the type of attention that attracts support. Now, bumping off a billionaire…

Tip: Don’t shop hungry!
When you’re hungry, everything looks tempting, so you buy more. Weirdly, research shows that you’re much more likely to buy non-food items as well when you’re hungry. So eat before you go online to buy that new keyboard you need, otherwise you might end up with a whole new computer. Approximately 1/3 of the world's food is wasted every year (about 1.3 billion tons).

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Are We Rats?

10/10/2022

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Re-reading my own writing invariably makes me want to vomit. There is a sour grapes element towards NS in a previous blog that I know upset my NS friends and now embarrasses me, as it betrays an illogical emotion that I would prefer to eliminate from my jottings. The realization that I was writing a blog because it was a place where I could express my oft-rejected opinions freely, without having reached a place where I was mature enough to eliminate emotion, made me reconsider whether I should continue to write one at all.

In addition, I received messages like the following: “My strong advice is to close your blog down until you are done with anything related to secondary schools…words like 'non-PC', 'trans', 'race' - no headteacher will touch that with a bargepole…. It doesn't matter about the nuances of what you're saying - one clumsy sentence picked up by a member of the press, and it's 'Hertfordshire School Allows Ecofascist To Run Seminar' in the Daily Mail”.

One way or another, I had decided perhaps a blog wasn’t a good idea. On the other hand, let’s face it, my reply to that email was: “I am going to scream my truth from every writing medium and tie myself to railway tracks. I’ve already blocked bridges with Extinction Rebellion even in NS. At that time, when the long line of armed police decided enough was enough and ordered us to disperse, I didn’t know how an arrest would affect my job at Dal, so I backed off the bridge and cheered from the sidelines as others more courageous got arrested. I got fired from Dal all the same. Sure I’ll get arrested. But maybe I’ll also discover different ways of influencing, or helping my side of the battle. The blog stays—and the first public comment I got shifted my stance about the Nazi comment—so it’s clear that whatever stance I take, I am utterly open to changing it. It is an invite to converse, and people are already engaging, personally rather than publicly. But the public statements will come. I truly hope someone shows me that eco-terrorism isn’t the way to go! Because if I get a shot at a massive oil giant I’m going down for life!”

Another pro-keeping-the-blog is the fact that some people are kindly interested in how it’s going here in England; I cannot write individually to everyone, so I said that I’d post updates on the blog.
So, I continue, although I will continue to fuck up.

In addition to sour grapes, I was also uncomfortable with my suggestion in a previous blog that the war was between the rich and the poor—any type of generalization is as crazy as racism, isn’t it? Look at Yvon Chouinard, who has directed all future profits of his $3 billion company to combatting climate change. There are as many brilliant rich people battling climate change as in any other group, isn’t there?

No.

Rich people are demonstrably contributing to the problem massively more than any other group. Wealth seems to produce such hubris that they’re all convinced they can outsmart nature and escape the apocalypse they are creating. Look at Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos’s ambition to colonize Mars. Or Thiel’s ambition to reverse the ageing process. Money can conquer nature herself! The Guardian article at the end of this blog describes a group of billionaires who are intent on saving themselves from the coming apocalypse by building massive under-ground bunkers. The article describes their worries about controlling the human guards that they’ll need to keep the desperate hordes at bay. How will they control them, these billionaires ponder, once their bitcoins become useless? Neck bracelets? Food control?

At a time when we can actually avoid the apocalypse, those contributing to it the most continue to live 'in the manner to which they have become accustomed'—confident that their wealth will save them. “It’s as if they want to build a car that goes fast enough to escape from its own exhaust.” Isn’t it reasonable to consider taking down these selfish isolationists? Who consider us dispensable rats?

Yeah, yeah, I know that this isn’t very informative. I am just looking for a place to live, increasingly desperately. I’m fine; I’m alive. I’ll be back for Xmas in two minutes.

Tip: If we cut down 10% of our driving, that is a massive contribution to the climate battle, because transportation is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions in NA. So how much do you drive? Your average week might look something like this: work and back/extra-curriculars in the evening for the kids/friend and family visits/shopping/appointments. Let’s say, 30 trips a week. If you eliminate THREE of those weekly trips, you are doing your bit to save your own children. Arrange a car share with other mums for extra-curriculars and bundle your shopping with your appointments—DONE!

Or, we can be like the billionaires, resisting small, painless changes now. Because let’s face it, the poorest in the West are still ‘rich’ in comparison to most of the world—and our footprints are unforgivably large compared to poorer countries. If this article makes us angry, it’s because the billionaires view us as dispensable rats. We must be vigilant to avoid unconsciously viewing those poorer than us in a similar way. There but for the grace of God go I…

We all find it hard to modify our lives. We are all addicted to our large footprints and want to live in 'the manner to which we have become accustomed'. And collectively, our actions are killing people in developing countries right now. Of course we need systematic change, and I battle for that (through petitions/protests/voting) every day, but we must recognize our individual responsibility to make minor changes now and stop passing the buck. You might not be political, or have the time to sign petitions, but if you can't cut down three trips a week, you are no better than the billionaires.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff Are We Rats?

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Lessons learned in my quest to develop an influential script for climate change

9/5/2022

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DDL is this lovely property near Tatamagouche owned by Shambhala. I volunteered there for the month of July, during an intensive month-long practice called a Dathun. I never got so much appreciation for doing the same things I’ve done all my life (cooking and gardening) and that phenomenon I‘ve noticed—where people hate my guts or adore me and I have no idea why? Well, I was riding high in DDL; luckily, my hubris wasn’t affected by the admiration! Hate or love—you just don’t know me. I’m the most selfish person you have ever met. I am only doing this because I was a shit mother and wife and a total failure as a writer and teacher, so I need to find SOMETHING where I might do some actual good. 😊

So in DDL I continued my mission in life. In case there is still doubt about what that is—the biggest crisis that humanity has ever faced is coming. Experts tell us that there is time to avoid the worst, so I’m like, yeah, let’s do it.
Our children will judge us on what we do today, because they will be living with the consequences. Your legacy depends on what you choose to do this decade. Plus it’s really a privilege to live in a time when what we do makes a difference.

But when I spout this stuff, the worst ignore me and the best seem to either get defensive, or overflow with admiration. For the first two cases, I have to work on a script that won’t offend; that’s my current mission—to find the right words. It really doesn’t matter what you do, so long as you take the crisis into account when you make your decisions. Love steak? Stuff your face with it, as far as I’m concerned. But if you gobble meat AND travel several times a year AND consume like you always have—in short, if you aren’t modifying your life in any way—then you’re either unprincipled or ignorant. Should we start a whole new shame culture? Instead of people ooh-ing and ahh-ing when you post photos of your second trip of the year (we’re all allowed one) then we could shame you publicly. 😊 Small houses will be applauded and monsters condemned. Huge cars will…you get the picture. It’s coming, believe me.

So at DDL I approached every person individually and engaged in climate conversations, with various results. There were a couple of young people who agreed that it was time for eco-terrorism (and here I thought I was being extreme)! Boomers ranged from hubris-ridden speeches about how it was too late to various versions of ‘fuck you’. The trigger for this usually happened when I earnestly tried to float the idea that I would fight happily beside a Nazi in the war against the climate crisis.
“Am I going to invest energy arguing about whether I am inferior to another person, if by shutting up I increase the chances of saving my own children?” I say with irrefutable logic.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying when you’re in a war for survival nothing else matters. I’m saying if we could just put aside the differences that polarize us…”
“Are you actually saying that a reprehensible racist…”
“…who is fighting the crisis because he loves his children, as even reprehensible racists are wont to do…”
“I’m Jewish and my kid is trans. FUCK YOU.”

Yup, Dalhousie thinks just like you, which is why they fired me. We’re hurtling towards suicide but wait! Pronouns, pronouns! Reminds me of the looney-tunes feeling I got in the lead-up to Trump’s election. He was busy praising dictators and insulting visible minorities, women, the disabled, the grieving parents of a dead soldier, and the media was saying, hey, what about Clinton’s emails? This guy is totally insane but…emails! Emails!

Anyway, I’m Jewish and if trans mean you want to be the opposite sex I’m that too. Of course it was a French person who showed me the light—those romantic frogs. They were talking about happiness. Ever heard the word “happiness” in a French accent? That’s right, they drop the ‘H’ and stress the second syllable—aka, “a-penis”. I feel that my trajectory in life would have been very different if I’d had one of them, but never lose hope—if the Buddhists are right about reincarnation I might strike lucky next time. Oh, to experience the feeling that produces that scrunched-up focus on their faces when they penetrate! The best I can do is a one-second orgasm after an hour of diddling.

Another Dathun participant wrote a long letter stating the negative facts we all know under the mistaken belief that his brilliant argument for hopelessness would create admiration. But he was unable to hear the hope that I am trying to instil (if we all pull together, we can totally do this, but each and every one of us has a personal responsibility to transition away from consumerism and fossil fuels).

Towards the end, I asked if I could speak to the head teacher, despite the fact that he was much sought-after—the Buddhists certainly admire their teachers (I have no doubt that if I had been a Buddhist teacher I would have started to think my jizz was divine too--come back Sakyong--it's not your fault!).
Anyway, I digress: this wonderful person listened to me with absolute attention, and at the end of my monologue when I asked, “So if you agree that this is the biggest crisis humans will face and trust the experts who tell us there is time to reverse it, then why don’t you incorporate it into your teachings?”

He looked at me and said, “Yes. Why don’t I?”

After the Dathun had finished and the teacher had left, one of the participants told me that the teacher has asked for the lecture on the last day, which wraps up the entire Dathun, to focus on the climate. The participant explained that as a result, the lecturer had linked a particular writing of Chögyam Trungpa—where he calls us to action against the evils of the day—clearly to the climate crisis.

Boy, did I feel good! But why does one get angry, another try to impress, and the Teacher listen?

Fucked if I know!

Finally…I love your feedback! Someone mentioned that it might be useful to provide tips, on the basis that many people don’t know what to do. Great idea--I’ll provide a tip at the end of each post.

Tip One: Hang up your laundry. “A new study found that dryers are the main source of microfiber pollution into the atmosphere, with each dryer responsible for releasing up to 120 million microplastic fibers into the air each year.” Plus, ,” Air-drying your clothes can reduce the average household’s carbon footprint by a whopping 2,400 pounds a year” (https://www.greenamerica.org/green-living/ditch-your-dryer)
PLUS, it’s pleasant to hang your clothes outside in the summer and they smell really good. If you hang up your clothes inside in the winter, they will add moisture to the very dry NS winter air, which is good for your skin. Only pluses here. It will soon be a pleasurable habit!

2 Comments

Sorry and Adieu!

8/9/2022

8 Comments

I want to apologize.

I realized I am always exhorting people to do things; I guess it’s part of the life of an author; you are always begging people to come to readings and launches. Ditto my Climate Action Game. And now I’m exhorting you all to start a discussion around my blog! I apologize. It is highly unlikely that I have ever responded to a single FB post of yours.
Why should I expect you to find what I write interesting, if the interest isn’t reciprocated? In your mind, that beautiful picture of your kids (or worse, your dog) is interesting and my climate rants are boring. While I understand your desire to project the impression that you are surrounded by sentient creatures who love you—I urge you to read your Tolstoy! “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

All reciprocal likes on FB are really reciprocal lies. Nobody wants to read a story about a happy family, and nobody spends more than two seconds looking at your photos, which is exactly how long they remember them after they move on. And the fact that your dog loves you does not mean you are lovable. Blondi gazed adoringly at Hitler, even as he killed her. Dogs are just kinda stupid that way.

Damn! I’ve just got back from a month at DDL and actually practiced fairly consistently; I can’t post the above and spread negative karma, can I? I know my POV is a very small lens. I’m only saying that we find each other equally boring. 😊

But we all need to find people that interest us, and are interested in us. I was blessed to find some at DDL—the next blog will examine my absolute joy in the results of my efforts to spread environmental knowledge while I was there; but—just like at university where most of the students loved me but one or two always hated my guts every class no matter what I did—some DDL folks loathed me on sight (like the fellow who jabbed his finger at my face and screamed, “Fuck you”. He seriously needs to meditate or toke more—results are very similar if you’re short on time). More on “lessons learned in my quest to develop an influential script for climate change” in the next blog.

But still, none of the people who excited me at DDL are from NS. I think in order to find people who will be interested enough in what I have to say to engage with me, I need to leave NS. I will be leaving next month, in September.

When I was 16, I lived in my house with my parents, usually a sibling or two, my horses, cats, a dog; I had a regular life with school and work in the summer. Six weeks after I turned 17, I lost my father. By the time I was 18, I had lost everything. My mother had gone abroad, the animals were gone and the house was empty. I got kicked out of Katimavik and I had nowhere to go. Luckily a friend rented me her room in her father’s house in Toronto.

Then I left NS for 12 years. The first three years I travelled the world on my own, but I was basically frightened the whole time. So when I settled in one place for ten years (Israel) I latched onto a man who wanted to look after me forever, who did everything competently, who would provide well and be a brilliant father. And these things were all true, but that wasn’t a brave choice. And so 32 happy years passed.

Fast-forward to 2022 and it’s all happening again—the loss of a parent, followed by the loss of an entire life. In 2020 I lost my mother, whom I loved passionately. In 2021 I left my husband, losing my home, my goats, sheep, chickens—except the ones in my freezer 😊. Now I need to leave NS and retrace my steps, and this time I trust that I’ll find the courage; because this time I have a mission, and it’s not centered on my paltry life and desires (this focus led me to marriage/children). It is centered on the fact that I passionately believe the human race can avoid catastrophic climate change.
First, because the scientists tell us there is still time.
Second, because we have a global roadmap—the Paris Agreement.
Third, because there is a tsunami of change happening.
And more than all those put together, because I want to live a worthwhile life.

It doesn’t matter what the outcome will be—nobody can predict the future. What matters is that my definition of living a worthwhile life is to devote it to enabling others to realize that we have a personal responsibility to reduce our own footprints in order to pass on a sustainable earth to the next generation. I am working to develop an influential script, and I need to find others like me, who can help me.

To finish with positive karma due to DDL influence, I would like to end by remembering all the lovely people from NS who have supported me in a myriad of different ways. By reading my books, coming to my launches, playing the Climate Action game, getting me into their schools, giving me feedback—thank you.

Keep in touch. I might be outside of NS, but I’m still on FB. And I read all my messages. Bless you!

8 Comments

Disclaimers

7/21/2022

2 Comments

My idea to write a blog met with surprising resistance from my loved ones.
From my sister: “Charlotte - do you mind leaving the country before you publish your blog? I feel that your 'rants/ fresh thoughts' will come across better from a distance!”
From my ex: “You can’t put the word ‘penetrate’ in your blog. You can’t put anything personal.”
Me: “My dear man, every single man alive is penetrating thousands of times during their lives. How is that personal?”
Ex-Hubby: “It’s crude and vulgar.”
I stare at him incredulously. Ex-Hubby is my definition of vulgarity. I basically slept in a sewer for 32 years; every time I turned over in bed a wave of Hubby-Farts permeated the air.
So to calm ruffled family feathers, here are two disclaimers:

DNA similarity in NO WAY denotes similarity of opinion
Everything I write is from my own limited perspective. Perhaps from Ex-Hubby’s perspective I was the source of the Flatulence in our Four-poster. But you’ll never know, because I’m the one wielding the pen. BAAAAAAHHHHHHAAAAAA

And one more disclaimer: don’t read my blog if you have any expectations. If blogs are supposed to be consistent, too bad. I hope that the fact that my first blog was about Trump and Trudeau and my second one was about Toots makes this clear.
So why am I writing a blog? I guess, ultimately, my goal is to start a terrorist group, but I get distracted by bodily functions because they’re so damn fun to write about.
Did you know how much the twelve biggest oil companies will spend daily for the next eight years on new oil and gas exploration—aka carbon bombs? $384 million. According to The Guardian, this will ‘’drive catastrophic climate breakdown around the world”.
Unless the oil companies are stopped.
This is the moment when you have to ask yourself that famous philosophical question: If you were in the room with Hitler and you knew what he would to in the future, would you kill him?
We know what the Exxon oil executives will do. According to 97% of the world’s scientists, their actions will cause temperatures to exceed human tolerance in some areas. If this happens, we can expect heat waves that will cause more deaths over a period of two weeks, than Hitler caused over the entirety of the war. Cooked alive.
And it’s not even because of a twisted ideology about the greatness of one’s own race/creed/belief (as a Jew I have been privy to these types of biased feelings myself)—it’s about short-term profit. Isn’t this much, much worse?
The difference between a 1.5 degree temp rise and a 3.6 temp rise (where we’re headed if the oil companies go ahead with their plans) is the difference between reasonable lives—or horrific ones—for our children. Our CHILDREN!
So if we love our children and our grandchildren, then how can we argue against a few strategic assassinations, aimed at people who are lining their pockets with our kids’ future? Perhaps they think billionaire toots don’t smell so bad. They’re wrong—and if you don’t think they’re despicable and dispensable—you’re wrong too.
If you think I’m full of crap, I’d love to hear why. Because I’m asking you to stop with this polarized bullshit. Our different views about Roe Vs. Wade, or immigration, are distractions preventing us from uniting against our common foe.
Leonard Cohen sang:
“There is a war between the rich and poor
A war between the man and the woman
There is a war between the left and right
A war between the black and white
A war between the odd and the even”.
At the time Leonard Cohen wrote it, he was correct, but today there needs to be an extra line: “Not all wars are born equal.’’
There is only one war that will wipe out billions of people. And it’s not between the black and white or men and women. And it’s certainly not our very divided opinions on these subjects --it’s not about the war between the left and right.
It’s the war between the rich and poor. We all love our children and the vast majority of us are good people. Let us unite against our common foe, for the sake of our children. How about it? Ready for a little eco-terrorism?
I will struggle to tell the truth, but I only possess the information I know, so if readers have information that disputes something I am saying, inform me so I can learn and shift my views!

2 Comments

Trudeau vs.Trump

7/5/2022

0 Comments

Goodness me—what is happening to our neighbours in the South? Trump appointed 33% of America's nine supreme court judges and they’re jumping into action, bringing back the dark ages. Here in Canada, we don’t even notice that Trudeau has basically appointed the entire supreme court (I’m crap at math, is 66%--twice as many as Trump)?
So why aren’t Canadians up in arms about this, like they are down South? Is this because we’re nice Canadians?
Nope, people are the same everywhere (and Canadian Complacency irritates me).
So is this because Trudeau is way better than Trump and we all love him?
Nope, about 50% of our population hate his guts. I insist that my nails were just as chewed up during the 2019 election than any American nail the following year. Andrew Scheer’s ‘climate plan’ didn’t set any targets for greenhouse gas reductions—which is the whole POINT of the Paris Agreement. He also planned to do away with the carbon tax, which is demonstrably one of the best leverage actions to meet our Paris Climate Targets. Yes I know, I know, why should we poor Canadians pay more at the pumps (even though we’re actually not because the cost is rebated)?
Well, maybe because climate change is a leading cause of hunger, and between 2019 and 2020, the number of undernourished people grew by as many as 161 million.
The huge upsurge in support for Ukrainians made me smile—how many posts did I see saying, “Stop complaining about gas prices. Ukrainians are dying”. I guess it’s just a natural tendency for people to identify with their own colour the most. Ouch, us nice Canadians don’t like to hear that, do we? It’s those Yanks who are racist—not us!
So that means that we believe every human is equal, and we should be happy to pay a carbon tax to save lives (even though we’re actually not because the cost is rebated), just like we bite the bullet at the pump for the sake of Ukraine (all right, mostly it’s lack of choice, but it’s fun to feel virtuous just because we’re doing what we have to do anyway…).
Meanwhile Trudeau is busy depicting himself as a climate champion even as he builds oil pipelines. So not sure what we should feel virtuous about, since he’s equally destroying the lives of our children. Wish I’d voted for Sheer now (almost).
But even with the climate we’re doing better than the US, where the Supreme Court has just limited the E.P.A’s ability to regulate power plant emissions. Overturning Roe & Wade is sad, but this decision is on a whole different scale. Why was there so much more outrage on FB over this? You really think that fighting for our rights as women is more important than climate change?
I gave up my belief in my right to control my own body at some point in my 30s. I was lying on my side in bed, utterly exhausted, with a baby male at my breast and a bigger male penetrating me from behind. I thought how everybody was enjoying my body so much more than I was. I thought how Nature herself regulated me to a second-class citizen in my own body, when she took calcium from my teeth because the fetus needed it. Anyway, if we haven’t solved racism and sexism during the apex of human affluence, it sure ain’t going to happen when we’re in a climate crisis.
But I digress; back to the original point. Since Trudeau has elected massively more supreme court judges than Trump, why aren’t his foes screaming blue murder? Because luckily for Canadians, we have managed to hold on to our key democratic values on both sides of the polarized border. Trudeau’s appointments have not hastened to overturn prior decisions based on their individual political beliefs. They continue to try to reach objective and just conclusions, just like Supreme Judges are supposed to.

I know there’s lots of stuff in this piece that people I admire might disagree with. Please feel free to dialogue—I don’t see the point of a blog unless it opens discussion.

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I am a writer and I will try to amuse and entertain you with this blog, while provoking thoughts that challenge your existing beliefs. But beliefs only change with dialogue--so trust that I am looking for the truth as much as you are.

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